Perhaps I was a little too hasty in jumping in to the elements of design series. Maybe you didn’t even know I was planning a series! Let’s backtrack just a bit and I’ll explain why we will be discussing the elements of design.
The focus of this blog is obviously graphic design. But we need a place to start; we need some objective standards, guidelines and rules to follow.
That’s where the elements of design come in to play.
The elements of design are fundamentals, but that doesn’t mean they just are for beginners. As you can see from comments on Get in Line, Now! many seasoned designers still found going back to the basics useful.
The Design Language
The elements of design give us an objective way to analyze and critique design. They make up a language for us to communicate what is working and what is not in a piece.
How confusing would it be to try to talk about something without this language, and especially without being able to point to it, and have the other person understand? “Oh, this little thing here needs to be, um, fatter, but thinner sometimes, too, and make it stand out more… somehow.” Much simpler and clearer to say, “This line should to vary in weight and it needs more space around it.”
This language also helps us describe the affect of different aspects of the design on our audience. Last time, one of the things we looked at was how line can create a mood or a feeling. Just from a simple line, one of the elements of design, you can cause a viewer to feel angst and tension.
Using the Elements
Design by definition is planned. Design is created to be useful. How do we know what will be useful? By thinking about the elements of design and how each element contributes to the delivery of the message.
The elements give us as designers guidelines when creating our work. They can remind us what’s missing or how we can use something more effectively and they give us a way to talk about our work with others.
The Future
Over the next two weeks we will be discussing the rest of the elements of design, shape, scale, space, color, texture and value (in no particular order). After the series is complete, it will always be available through a link in the sidebar as a place to start for newcomers to Creative Curio. The elements will become the foundation for this blog and everything we talk about, so it is important to understand them.
You can read more about the elements of design in the Real World Example series:
Why not take a minute to subscribe to the feed for Creative Curio (it’s free!) so you don’t miss this series?
